Research in Motion, manufacturers of the popular BlackBerry smart phone series, have announced plans to launch a new web browser for their phones based on the open source WebKit layout engine, and offered delegates at this weeks Mobile World Congress a sneak peak (see the video at the end of this post).

Although technologies such as CSS3 and HTML5 have slowly been gaining ground lately across the web, it is in the mobile world that they have truely been taken to heart, with Apples Iphone leading the way. Due in part to a lack of flash support, app developers have been quick to capitalise on the benefits of CSS3 and HTML5 in their software, thanks largely to the high level of support found in Apple’s WebKit powered Safari browser.

Once the smart phone of choice for many, the BlackBerry has left many customers frustrated with its current browser, plageud by slow behaviour and lack of support for JavaScript-heavy pages and modern web standards. Their new WebKit based browser should in theory bring the BlackBerry back on par with the Iphone, at least in browsing terms, offering support for CSS3, HTML5 and AJAX as well as significantly improved JavaScript handling, with the browser scoring 100/100 in the Acid 3 Test.

Perhaps more importanly, with Apple, BlackBerry and Android powered devices now all sharing the WebKit layout engine, developers will be able to utilise technologies such as CSS3 and HTML5 in truly cross platform deployments, rather than being limited to working only on the Iphone.

Although an official launch date has yet to be set, the new browser is expected later this year, with some predicting a summer release.

The video below offer a sneak peak of the new browser in action at this years Mobile World Congress event.

This is pretty awesome news! We have been holding off on a mobile solution for Blackberry in the hope of this will happen soon and that our jQTouch/WebKit mobile site will work with minimum tweaking. 100/100 in the Acid 3 Test is music to my ears! :)